


Memory Burns

by goldandsteel



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: And some tears too, Clint Barton and Natasha Romanov Friendship, F/F, Femslash, Femslash February, Martasha, Natasha Feels, Natasha-centered, blood everywhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 16:10:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldandsteel/pseuds/goldandsteel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some memories, just like scars, will never go away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memory Burns

**Author's Note:**

> Heeeey it's Femslash February! So I wrote this! It's unbetad, drop me a line if you would like to beta it =] but I wanted to publish it so much. It's Natasha-centered, not really canon-compliant regarding her relationship with Clint, and there's not a lot of romance but maybe I'll write again. Martasha feelings are taking over me. Hope you like it and feedback is always welcome. <3

“Who are you?”

“Nobody.” The tiny voice came followed by a slap. She fought tooth and nail to keep her eyes from flooding with tears.

“Who are you?”

“Nobody.” Another blow hit her, not stronger than the first one but more painful, the pain pilling up on her delicate face.

“Who are you?”

“Nobody!” She shouted this time, receiving another slap and letting the tears flow freely, unable to stop them. The man shook his head looking extremely disappointed.

“I still don’t believe you. Your eyes, your face, you all are screaming you have a name, a life, and you are begging me to rip it from you.” From the back of the cold room, a woman dressed in gray went closer and wiped her tears with a soft hand.

“We have plenty of time, Niko. We will make her forget.”

The girl tied to a chair frowning in a useless attempt to keep a straight face was seven years old. She was called Anya. But by the time she was nine, she actually and irrevocably forgot it.

* * *

 

“Who are you?” Silence answered back until a punch sounded. The blow made a somewhat wet noise, being landed in a bloody face.

This time, the inquisitor was the girl. The man laughed and spat two broken teeth at her and she shook his broken arm, making him scream, to then undress him leaving him vulnerable under the painful Russian winter. Piece by piece, she kept his clothing in a plastic bag and he stopped laughing when she shove him hard in the snow and held his face against it.

When the man stopped struggling, she pulled him free and punched him again to wake him up.

“You are not going to die.” Her voice was colder than the weather; colder than the snow. “You will suffer and I’ll keep you alive until you tell me.”

Tears begun prickling in his blue eyes and it took just three more semi suffocations to him start talking – and boy, he did talked. Even more than she had hoped when she first tracked and cornered him, getting unnoticed by his group. Then she offered herself as a young whore and that silly American fell for it. By the end, he was crying and asking his clothing back and murmuring absently _please, please, I’m so cold, please._

The girl gave him his clothing and told him he had one minute to get dressed and run out of her sight. He took four minutes and as soon as he turned his back to her, looking as relieved as terrified, she shot him in the head twice.

She was fourteen by now and the name she could remember – _she was taught to remember_ – was Natasha. But her name didn’t matter, just as his, as soon as the mission was completed and she filled the report. Then she would forget his name, the names and details he gave her, his watery blue eyes pleading for mercy and the pink pool spreading itself in the snow around his crumbled head.

She had become an expert in remembering and forgetting.

* * *

 

“You’ll probably become infertile, maybe you’ll have hallucinations and other adverse effects may happen.” The doctor stared her through his glasses as if he was questioning. As if no one told her that before. As if she had an option, in first place.

Natasha could be young but she was nothing near of stupid and she knew that the transformation was a very big part of the training of any SS contemplated agent. In fact, to go through the deal was considered an honor, the girl could barely wait for it and not even the worried face of the doctor could penetrate her steel conviction.

She screamed. For days and nights and until she lost notion of daylight, she screamed, tied to a bed with the substances dripping slowly onto her veins.

Eventually the pain was gone, the bindings were gone, the bed was gone and the sixteen-year-old girl returned to her duties a little disappointed to see nothing exquisite in her. It wasn’t until the time she went on a dock to a drinking competition she realized she needed two full bottles of vodka to get slightly drunk.

As the following days went by, Natasha noticed she could jump higher, kick stronger, fall into the ground without pain, run faster, see with richer details things very far from her. _Enhancing_ was the perfect denomination to it – she didn’t receive any new and astonishing powers but she was really pleased with her new abilities.

Sometimes when she went to bed, she couldn’t believe how lucky she was. How lucky she had to be to be picked by KGB still young, trained and received the gift of the formula. How caring and nice the organization was to her all of her life and how she loved her Mother Russia.

She was perfectly brainwashed to the point of having absolutely none memory of it.

* * *

 

“You stupid cunt.” The droplets of spit shone in his beard and he took another long sip of his beer.

“Don’t talk to the lady like that.” A military man, all clad in his uniform, reprehended the brute idiot and Natasha rolled her eyes. “You are our guest. We want to talk to you, that’s all.”

Once they managed to shot her with a doping dart, she couldn’t fight properly – but she still gave them a fucking hard time to tie her to the chair. Oddly enough, no torture came; the room was well lit and warm, the chair was comfortable and they put a bandage over the ugly hole the dart left on her arm. But _talk_? She wasn’t that stupid.

“You wouldn’t have to kidnap me to talk. What do you want from me?” She voice sounded a little strange to her own ears, but she kept it firm. “If you think for a moment I would betray my nation, you better kill me before I kill you.”

 

The American man sighed, scratching his eyes, and expulsed from the room the other man, pulling a table full of files to her front.

“Your nation… Mother Russia. A mother that instead of nurturing and loving you, ruined your childhood, took your youth, froze your heart, washed your brain.” He looked actually sad for some minutes and her eyebrows went high.

“Nonsense. They raised me, they fed me, they gave me a beautiful childhood and talents that now I use to pay my mother back.” He blinked for a long time, his brown eyes staring her with a strange mix of hatred and sorrow. He was a mid-aged man and the years were starting to take its toll in his hard and sad face, she noticed. She wanted to take that pity look out of his face with a knife.

“Allow me to show you what your mother really does to her little girls.” The words reverberated on the room just as the noise of his chair, as he approached her and started to show her the files, the piles of pictures, the top secret documents of her own country that an American man should have never been able to put his hands on.

He shown her everything for hours and by the end of his explanations, she broke her chair, snapped his neck and jumped through the window glass, hurting her ankle when she fell on the hard snow four floors under.

* * *

 

Natasha slowly started to remember.

* * *

 

“What the fuck could you offer that I would remotely want?” Her boot was tapping nervously in the wooden floor and she was counting the seconds he was wasting.

“Don’t you feel not even a little bit distressed to know that KGB was rot until the bone and they were using you for several particular reasons that not the benefit of your country?” The man was wrapped in a tweed suit plus a fur coat, a cigarette hanging loosely from his fingers. She was melting in the warm French cafeteria without understanding how could that sucker be feeling cold. _Americans, tsc tsc._

“It’s gone, too late to come back, unless you have a time machine to offer me. Then, I could consider it.” Natasha smiled coldly sipping her coffee and he pulled a silver clock from his pocket.

“I don’t. But you see what it is?” She stared him grumpily and he opened the clock. “This is time. The time you lost working for them, the time you waste running from them. Don’t you think of the time they took from you? I’m offering you the time you could still have with us, because time is eating you alive and unless you die in one of those jobs you have been fixing for yourself, you will grow too old and too weak to kill with half a world wanting your neck. It’s not a joyful perspective, is it?” Natasha opened and closed her lips for a moment.

“I’m not you, Mr. Hendricks. I’m not very human and if you know so much as you claim to, you should know that too. My days are not counted.” His answer was a gulp, until he found the words to reply.

“We are aware of the experiments the KGB inflicted on young agents. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this and I truly hope you don’t snap my neck for it, but your days are more counted than mine, miss Romanov.” Her eyes scrutinized him searching for a wavering nerve, a bluffing tick, a flick of nervous fingers, a change in his pupils. She found nothing as he continued. “Let me put this way: the experiment hurried your organism. Your body is pushing, consuming itself four times faster than a normal body. You will die in eight years, ten if you are lucky, and it’s not going to be a peaceful death. Trust me, I’ve seen it.”

The silence between them lingered a long time where they both pretended to be occupied with their coffees. When his cigarette was over she lit one for herself and took a long drag staring through the window at a couple who was exchanging snowballs happily on the outside. That sucker was telling the truth, she could tell. Natasha could see with her own eyes what he meant; she reached her 20s looking like a 30 years old. Time, happy time other people had when she was hunting and killing and being beaten had been stolen from her as well.

“I’m not only saying you can live a better life with us, m’am. You can live better and live _longer_.” Her hazel eyes stared at him suspiciously and he smirked. “We have a treatment that can regenerate the damages of your body and grant you the same abilities. Although it’s experimental, we had good results and the USA government is willing to offer this to you in exchange of your fidelity and efficiency, which is widely known.” Natasha considered him some moments – luckily for him, not thinking about snapping his neck, but contemplating the honesty in his words.

She was getting tired of killing for money and running from one country to another trying to escape the Russian agents, that was very true. A CIA badge could work wonders to her name and fame and maybe, who knows, she could actually retrieve the time KGB stole from her. But the man was offering too much and asking too few.

“That’s all you want from me? My fidelity and my efficiency?” The question had a grave tone and he nodded.

“That’s not quite as simple as you may imagine, miss Romanov. Fidelity means fighting against everyone and everything in USA’s behalf, including you birth nation, if it’s needed. It may means killing agents with whom you grew it, fought with and even loved. And your efficiency is the key – if it reach a day where you no longer possess it—“

“I’ll no longer be needed.” She smiled, for once honestly, and he nodded again, calling the waitress and ordering another two coffees as if he was predicting she needed time to think.

She didn’t. Natasha could recognize a good deal when she saw one and in no time, she knew she could forget she was even born in Russia. Two days later, she was an American citizen under training in CIA. If they asked, she would gladly forget her history.

* * *

No one loved her in CIA when she arrived. She got all the kinds of suspicious looks and scowls and even envy from being chose to get a few drops of the serum, as they called. Even going through dozens and dozens of polygraphs and tests, Natasha’s presence was frowned upon by most people.

It hurt nothing next to her first transformation, but the effects were quite visible. She looked younger, felt better, no scar would remain for more than a few days, no flu or disease could affect her. Within the years, as she proved her long-lasting fidelity to USA, she gained the trust of a good number of people and made a few friendships.

The work was usually softer than in KGB also – or maybe she was too used with roughness - which gave her more time and tranquility and after fifteen years, they moved her definitely to SHIELD’s division. Not to mention that the people in her neighborhood was getting wary of that redhead woman that didn’t grew old in nearly twenty years.

In short time, she forgot her old neighbors but she could recall vividly her former CIA colleagues, as well as partners from others secret agencies around the world.

Opposite to her expectations, no one in USA ever asked her to forget anything. Natasha liked that.

* * *

People in SHIELD knew she was a scientific experiment also so it was no big deal, since the strangest things occurred inside that division. Despite having time – all the time in the world, truth be told – Natasha hadn’t brought herself to date or marry like some of the agents. After passing through so many decades and seeing so many things change in society, love seemed something very distant and a little pointless.

If she felt like having a good dinner, she would go out to a nice restaurant, sit alone and wine and dine herself. If she felt like talking, she would call one of her colleagues to spend some minutes talking about how life was going. If she felt like fucking, she would go to a club and find someone to fuck senseless until leaving to her house.

But she would never tell them her name and if they told her theirs, she would quickly erase it from her memory.

* * *

It was in mission she met Clint; she had crossed his way sometimes before but back then, it was none of her business. She couldn’t care less about him until  SHIELD sent her to capture the archer. Natasha found him utterly ridiculous and instead of knocking him unconscious as SHIELD told her to do, she walked straight to him and told him that.

He laughed but turned serious when she told him her name. Everyone in the business knew Natasha Romanov; such as James Bond, her name reverberated through years, usually leaving a blood track behind from her violent past. She was not really proud of it, thought.

Clint called her a dime-killer, a term used to people without a trace of honor that would kill anyone for any payment, ever. Natasha spat on him before she could help and he wiped his face laughing again, asking if it wasn’t true. It wasn’t, she said, but it was a partial lie.

“You are on my path, you know that?” She asked him taking the opportunity. Clint was not the kind of man that could be knocked, drugged and convinced to stay on the side of the people who did that to him. She would have to talk through that idiot but thankfully she knew she was able to. “You are in my road. In a few years someone will reach you and call you a dime-killer. A few more and you will be too old, too useless even to kill a child for a dish of food or to kill an old man for a rotten apple. And then you will die, alone, bitter, and if someone buries you, with people pissing on your blank grave.”

He gulped and although she couldn’t see his eyes under those ridiculous sunglasses – _for fuck’s sake it’s 4 am_ – he was shaken. She told him she didn’t want that for herself and despite not knowing him, didn’t want it for him too because actually no one deserved that.

It took just a few more weeks until Clint gave a shot to visiting SHIELD, she always remembered proudly.

* * *

She liked to recall the day she met Coulson because, amongst other things, Coulson was a great human being. He had shaken her hand, smiled at her and talked to her as if he had no idea of who she was in her past, instead telling her of her recognized responsibility and efficiency in the field. Although her dark days had occurred more than thirty years ago, some people still liked to rub it on her face and she actually _hated_ when someone did it.

Coulson smiled at her and she knew immediately she wanted to become friends with him, even if he wasn’t the kind of man to become best friends with co-workers. He was always a very professional, witty and kind man nevertheless. It was always a pleasure to work beside him.

Some months later he introduced to her the new Lieutenant Maria Hill, a skilled agent but new at SHIELD. Coulson whispered to her be nice, for Agent Hill was a bit nervous, and Natasha wondered if he was kidding.

Maria didn’t smile wide. But she extended her hand and when Natasha grabbed it, there was this tiny smile twitching in the corner of her lips and her eyes had absolutely no trace of sarcasm or mistrust as she said she was looking forward to meet the famous Agent Romanov. Despite wanting to smile back and return the compliment, Natasha found herself incapable of doing anything but stare.

For the first time in several years, for reasons completely unknown to the Russian agent, she felt her eyes burn. Natasha couldn’t remember, not even trying hard, the last time she wept and she got herself wondering if it has been a year, a decade, _a life_. It was hard to hide the emotions surfacing, but she tried.

Nevertheless, Maria noticed. Her eyebrows knit together in worry and she kept Natasha’s hand when the redhead tried to pull it, probably unaware of it. When the woman recomposed herself and stared into the Lieutenant’s face again, she couldn’t believe in the worry on those pretty blue eyes while she assured everything was okay and it was a pleasure to meet her too.

She promised to herself she would never forget that day.

 

* * *

Everyone thought she had a steamy BSDM affair with Clint. Not that in fact they haven’t fucked a couple of times but there’s a big distance between sleeping casually with someone and actually having a long-term affair.

But reality was, Clint was the only one that knew all the sordid details of her past and she never asked him to tell her his, but he did anyway. He held her when she was angry enough to break a wall, he feed her when she was too lazy to cook _– if asking spring rolls is feeding someone_ -, he didn’t question her when she was too sad to talk.

Just as it was supposed to be, she looked after him too and it felt incredibly good to have a true friend. She was friends with Maria too and Natasha felt confident that with years going by, she would become a great friend of her also, although there was something else in their relationship she couldn’t put her finger on.

One of the turndowns of being friends with Clint was that Clint was unbelievably, unbearably honest; nearly a sober Tony Stark. Natasha wanted to punch his face when he asked her if her sentimental development had stopped in her thirteen’s during a talk about Maria but when she asked why, his answer made her froze.

“Tasha, for a super spy you can be really dumb.” He said with that odious mouth of him chewing openly. “You have a crush on her. I would go so far to say she has a crush on you too, but I don’t know her enough and she’s always with that face of _I’m the most serious agent of this most serious organization_ , so…” Clint shrugged, fighting the lamen with chopsticks, too proud to grab a fork.

“No. She’s my friend, I would know if I had something so… Shallow as a crush on her. Crushes are for teenagers that want to make out in the theater.” She wasn’t sure of the words escaping her mouth but they did anyway and he laughed openly.

“Then think, really think—okay, you don’t want to make out with her in a theater. But what do you want to do to her?” Natasha nearly opened her mouth to start speaking – _well, I want to protect her and stay by her side, I want to see her happy, hold her next to me and_ – but she contained herself before doing so. Even with her better poker face, Clint saw her astonishment and that bitch laughed until he was coughing.

Natasha was never very good at realizing things about herself in first place, she remembered that.

* * *

She laughed at the face Maria made when she told her she had become infertile with the Russian experimentation on her body. The agent had asked her how did she dealt with her period days having to be in the field, fighting, jumping, if she took pills to not have her period, and Natasha told her with all the calm in the world about the fact.

“They even said ‘your body must be useful, but a baby will never be, nor will the pains of bleeding every month. Trust us, Natasha, you were born to serve our nation and our people will be all the children you’ll ever want’. Not that I could really say no, but I said yes anyway. I wanted it, back then. So I have no period and no babies.” She shrugged and Maria’s face was so full of horror it was funny.

“I can’t even begin to express how disgusting that is.” The brunette shook her head. “I mean, I don’t want children and maybe you don’t too, but no one have the right to rip this choice out of us.”

“It’s too late anyway, Maria. Fresh tears don’t wake the long dead. We have to keep living and value what life gives us.” The agent looked her with a strange expression and Natasha only gazed back, lost in her eyes. Maria wasn’t just someone who managed to get into the personal life of her over the months; she was someone Natasha _wanted_ to get into her life.

Apparently Clint was right and when it came to her own personal life, her spy training was null because she couldn’t analyze and evaluate her friend’s behavior, for more she tried. Natasha, in the end, decided to ignore the matter and just enjoy their moments because every conversation, coffee or walk she had with Maria felt like the most nice and natural thing in the world.

It was exactly how it felt when Maria kissed her suddenly: natural. Her lips leaned in as if it was what they were supposed to do and it felt violently different from the kisses the Black Widow exchanged in her nights of searching for fun. The taller woman stepped back and, despite Natasha had kissed her too, apologized.

The redhead laughed from the top of her lungs, holding Maria’s hands and keeping her close to enjoy the warmth coming from her body. She laughed until tears were streaming down her face and Maria was laughing too, confused, waiting patiently to the crisis to go away.

As soon as it did Natasha kissed her, pressing her lips with all of her desire just for a moment. “Only you, Maria.” She whispered, barely an inch away from the other woman’s pink lips. “Only you would apologize for one of the best things that ever happened to me.”

Natasha didn’t think she had ever seen a smile so wide onto her friend’s face. She waited Maria laugh then hide her face in embarrassment some seconds, to kiss her again, making a remark in the back of her mind to always try to rip that kind of smile from her.

* * *

There were good days, in which everything went great. There were also bad days, in which everything went wrong. Every one of them engraved itself on her enhanced memory.

* * *

There were nights when she returned to her apartment and Clint was waiting for her with some kind of exotic food he would never be able to prepare himself. There were nights when there was only the television waiting for her and it was peaceful and quiet.

There were nights in which Maria was waiting for her with something good to eat she might or might not have made herself, although it never made a difference. To find her there always lit up Natasha as a Christmas tree.

There were nights in which she dreamed of memories she though she didn’t have anymore, of killings and tortures, of bones and blood and she woke up kicking in the bed, sweating, crying and heart exploding in her chest.

Sometimes, Maria would be there to hold her and kiss her forehead until the tears subside, never trying to make her tell what she had dreamed about. It was one of those nights when her girlfriend awakened her for the first time, long soft hands shaking her firmly.

“Tasha, wake up, wake up.” Her voice was soft as a feather but the redhead opened her eyes still drowned in the nightmare, trashing on the sheets. _Who are you?_ a voice echoed in her head. She couldn’t remember the wrong answer, but she did remember the right one: _nobody_.

Her eyes were moving too fast to process the view for some minutes before she could focus on the worried face in front of her. Panting, Natasha hid her face in the pale curve of Maria’s neck - _nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody_ echoing in her head _._ But there, in Maria’s arms, she felt like _someone_.

“Maria, help me.” She tried to break the contact to stare into the blue eyes she loved but she couldn’t. Her girlfriend hugged her tighter, caressing her hair and her voice continued in a streaming line, faint and desperate. “Help me… Sometimes I don’t know who I am or what I am and I know it’s stupid, I know, baby, I’m sorry but I just… I just wish I could _really_ forget.” Maria just nodded, rocking her tenderly and kissing her head in silence until Natasha finally started to relax.

The Russian burned that wonderful feeling in her mind. That was the kind of memory she wanted to have; this kind of memory served her well.

“You are a human, Nat, that’s who you are. And you are loved, that’s what you are. You don’t have to feel sorry for anything.” Maria’s tone was half sweet, half commanding, and Natasha smiled still sniffing from her crying. “But I can’t make you forget. Maybe one day someone invent a way to do it, a harmless way, my sweet.”

Natasha sighed, backing just enough to look into her girlfriend’s eyes. She knew Maria would heal her if she could and this only brought her some solace.

“I love you.” She whispered, hands tangled in that little messy bun of dark hair, and Maria smiled her rare wide smile again. Natasha leaned in to kiss her once more, emotions swirling in her chest; perhaps someday science would invent a way to make her forget, she really liked that idea, but it could wait as long as she had Maria.

* * *

It was in a conversation with Dr. Banner about brainwashing and memories manipulation that the reality hit Natasha, making her leave his lab abruptly. Later, she came back to thank him and talk some more about other curiosities of her. Banner was pleasant and patient at explaining things to people outside the science experts.

She didn’t, however, touch the memories subject anymore after he reminded her that erase memories forcefully would mean forget _it all_. Her troubled childhood, her anger, the people who hurt her, the people she killed, the people she loved. It would mean forget her old colleagues, her current ones, the Avengers, Coulson, Clint, _Maria_. So, the talk became pointless.

* * *

Natasha would rather remember everything. 


End file.
